The case for an object on a shelf, and what it means for your family in fifty years.
A printed book is a different object from a video file, a photo album, or a folder on a hard drive somewhere. We could try to convince you of that abstractly. Instead, here's the simple question: which of these will your great-grandchild actually find in 2080?
A note on timing:the printed book is something we're building, not something you can order yet. It'll arrive as an optional companion in 2026 (possibly early 2027). This page is the thinking behind why we're making it, so that when it's ready, you'll know exactly what it's for.
File formats don't. The video you took on a Nokia in 2007 is probably unplayable now, and even if it isn't, the device that played it back to you is in a drawer, dead. The photo albums in your grandmother's attic still work. The book on her shelf still opens.
We don't say this because we're nostalgic about paper. We say it because we've watched a hundred years of digital file formats come and go, and we know what survives. Books survive.
Subscribing to a service is a promise that you'll come back. Recording a moment is an act of love. But neither is yet the artefact your child will hold. The book is. It's the proof, to them, but also to you, that the time you spent capturing was real, that what you said matters, that the person you became as a parent is on a shelf they can reach.
Apps end. Servers move. Companies fold. The book on the shelf is the thing that's still there in 2070.
Hardcover, casewrap, square format, 216mm by 216mm. Up to 300 pages. Printed by Lulu in the UK and shipped to your door. The cover will feature your child's name (or yours, or whoever's life is being told); the inside, your photos printed on coated paper, beside prose written by our AI ghostwriter in your own voice from your video transcripts.
We'll use AI for the writing because most parents don't have time to transcribe sixteen hours of video into a memoir. The ghostwriter pulls your spoken words into chapter prose without losing how you actually talk. You'll read it back, change anything you want, regenerate sections, swap photos. When you're happy, you print it.
Each chapter of the book will include QR codes linking back to the videos. We'll snapshot those videos at the moment of printing into a dedicated, locked archive, kept apart from your active account. The QR codes resolve to that archive, not to your live storage.
Practically: if you stop subscribing tomorrow, your book still works. The QR codes still play the videos. Your great-grandchild scans one in 2080 and watches you reading them their first bedtime story. That's the whole point.
The idea is that it's up to you. Some families will want one book a year. Some will print one per chapter, eight across a childhood. Some will make compilations: "Year One," "The Whole Childhood," "Newborn through Toddler." Print-on-demand, not a single one-shot product.
The book is coming as an add-on in 2026, we'll confirm pricing closer to launch, with no surprises. If you're subscribing now, you're already capturing the moments, so you'll have plenty to make a book from the day it arrives.
Read more about how we keep everything safe on our safekeeping page
BabyMoments is live today. The printed book is coming in 2026 as an add-on, and everything you capture now will be waiting to make one from when it arrives.
